Where two or more district or boundaries overlap, a blending of these colors appears.

This change will be most effective in highly complex, urban areas such as Wilmington. Below is a screen capture of what eastern Wilmington looks like in HPOWEB without shading — it is difficult to say which portions of town are inside historic districts:

Wilmington, NC with boundary shading turned off

Now, with shading, it is much more easy to discern the portions of town inside historic districts:

Wilmington, NC with shading turned on

If you need to view an aerial image of a building with absolute clarity, simply uncheck the shading. The boundary outline will still display, unless you uncheck that as well – outlines are listed below each point layer.

Boundary outlines can be turned off by unchecking the box beside its name

The North Carolina Historic Preservation Office launched HPOWEB in the spring of 2011. A lot has happened in the intervening two years and we are excited now to announce the imminent release of version 2!

As we perform some long-awaited data migrations and software tweaks, you may notice some minor changes in the existing HPOWEB website. For one, we will slightly alter the symbology of the points, providing them with what we believe is a cleaner and more modern feel.

For example, here are two screen captures of Bertie County that compare the old and new symbology:

Old symbology

New symbology

Old Search functions

More importantly, HPOWEB users will be able to search all data classes at once. Currently, a user who wants to locate a resource based on a name, description match, or Site ID number might have to perform up to three separate searches before finding their point of interest (with “Search NR,SL, DOE”, “Search Local Landmark/District”, and “Search Surveyed”).

With the changes taking place, users will be able to search the entirety of the mapped historic resources, regardless of their designation or landmark status.

But wait, there’s more!

You may have noticed that we have scanned as PDFs all of the National Register nomination forms. These are available in an alphabetic list on the NC HPO website (here), as well as from within HPOWEB. The information box of any National Register listing includes a hyperlink to its nomination form PDF.

We have now mapped over 50,000 resources, including all designated resources — those with National Register (2800+ resources), Study List (4200+) , and Determined Eligible (1200+) status.

The new version of HPOWEB will feature several new enhancements and tools. Look for a future announcement about those.

Finally, a note to our heavy-duty GIS users, who may be directly consuming our published web map services. (If that sentence makes absolutely no sense to you, then continue about your day. We’ll talk again soon!)

Currently, the NC HPO is delivering resource data (point and polygon) through a variety of WMSs, one for each feature data class (National Register, Study List, Determined Eligible, Local Landmark, Surveyed). We are in the process of changing the structure of our geospatial database and expect to deliver the same data through ONE service, with multiple sublayers for each data type (including point and polygon).

Cary, NC needs your help! If you can, please provide any historic house plans and architectural drawings of subdivisions to the town. In particular they seek plans drawn by the hand of long time resident Jerry Miller. Miller is known to have designed homes in the Greenwood, Pine Valley and Meadowmont subdivisions, among others. Collecting historic plans can provide valuable information.

The North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office is updating the state’s comprehensive historic preservation plan, Legacy, which serves as a statement of public policy for historic preservation. The plan will assess the current status of historic resources and preservation efforts in North Carolina, examine needs and issues affecting preservation, and articulate goals and objectives to serve as a general guide for the continued preservation of the state’s historic resources over the next five years.